I'm disappointed to hear about the short comings of PCars online.
Sounds like offline is great, but I don't enjoy racing by myself, or against a computer.
I always thought GT offline was a terrible grind, but I never had to care, because as long as I could afford a car, and hop online I was happy. I loved GT5, and didn't care for GT6 as it felt like they simply re-sold GT5 to us. I've been looking forward to a racing game on the PS4 since I bought the damn system. I'm going to own PCars no matter what when it finally released here in the U.S. but over the weekend the more I read, the less excited I am about getting the game. Maybe that's for the best, as it will temper my expectations and I won't feel let down by hype. Maybe once the US PS4 users get a hold of the game online lobbies will be more available, but it sounds like SMS has some work to do to get online a living breathing entity, which is what allows games to maintain success in my opinion. It sounds as if SMS is more than willing to continue taking criticism and use it to improve their game, so that's promising. But as many of us are coming from Gran Turismo, it's natural for PCars to be compared to our 'old racing game' whether fair or not. If online lobbies are a chore, rather than a pleasure... I'm not going to want to play this game. I don't care how good the physics, graphics or sound it, if the 'game' is boring. I understand this is meant to be a 'sim' and honestly, I'm coming into this expecting PCars to simply be a console version of iRacing, which I was glad to hear. But iRacing is a game that, again, lives and breathes online, not offline. In iRacing the only limit I ever really felt hindered my ability to enjoy it, was the schedule of events. It wasn't massive, but I often felt there was too much downtime, but again this is compared to GT5 where you can instantly jump into a lobby and go racing. iRacing had a respectable schedule that was clean and tidy, and couldn't be faulted, but we live in a world of instant gratification and it took me a bit to adapt.
The lack of a social impact (I don't mean social media) in the online portion is worrying. You can't type to each other on PS4, but I assume Mics work correct? No practicing between events is mind blowing, but again, perhaps this is the instant gratification talking. None of this really matters, as by this time tomorrow I'll be playing the game hopefully and I'll find a way to enjoy it, but I really don't want this to be GT6 where I log in once a week, run a league with some friends, and then don't log in for another week. I'm hoping, praying, for a game that I'm infatuated with. When GT5 first game out, I spent 8-10 hours at work, just thinking of what i wanted to do in GT5 once I got home. Same thing with Madden and MUT, or FIFA FUT for some. This eventually wears off, as no game can hold a humans attention for too long, but that's usually how I tend to rate a game. Not by the graphics, physics, sounds, AI, liveries, car lists, so on and so forth... but by how badly I want to play it every day. I'll be sorely let down, if PCars doesn't ignite any sense of passion in me.
